Mr. Brian Cowen:

I think it would be, you know, stretching things a bit much if these people are ... predecessors of mine have been at far more bank dinners than I was ever at.

If anything, one of the private criticisms might have been that I wasn't meeting these guys very much at all for ... in my four years. So, you know, there was nothing, it was just a question of attending a dinner at their request. And that's what I did. I didn't intend doing any business, I didn't do any business, and it was a very social occasion. It wasn't a sit-down business agenda meeting or something, obviously that'd be different, you'd expect them to come into the Department of Finance and the meeting would be attended by officials or whatever. It wasn't that sort of a situation.